The Farm: A Mini Model of Mortality

Starling's newest little rescued kitten (so small that he had to perch on the side of the food bowl to reach the cat food) was here for five days. 

Long enough for Starling to name him Eddie. 

Every morning she would rush out before it was quite fully light to scoop him up. "Can he just come in for scriptures?" she'd ask. Then upstairs she'd go to give Hans the pleasant wake up of a kitten being held close. She'd sit him in her lap (or set him on the floor in front of her--only for him to run right back into her cozy lap) in the living room while I read morning scriptures and only reluctantly place him back outside (often with a small bowl of milk) when it was time for breakfast. Once school was out, she'd run back behind the house to find him again--before even removing her backpack or coming inside.

And then, two days ago, he went missing.

The kids occasionally try to accuse me of not liking animals. 

It isn't true. 

I'm not particularly fond of holding animals. And I do pooh-pooh the acquisition (and accompanying responsibility) of more animals. (And I am logical enough to feel that we cannot collect cats with impunity!)

But I love seeing or being near animals. (It actually brings me a great deal of genuine joy watching cows amble past our large front window or having Nelly and Holly run up to the fence--hoping I have something to offer them--when I am out walking the perimeter of the alfalfa field.) And I cannot bear the thought of any animal suffering in any way. (I feel stressed thinking of dogs kept in small runs, hen houses being too hot, or cows having to stand in the snow all winter. It's always been that way. My dad comforting a sobbing me on a houseboat in Lake Powell after the hook got quite badly stuck in one of the fish we caught. My brother Aaron taking me hunting only to recall my nature and think better of it--opting mid-hunt for a small picnic with me before heading home.)

So, as if the needs of family and children aren't enough to lose sleep over, last night I lay in bed--sleepless--thinking anxiously of Eddie and fretting over all of the things that might have become of the helpless little creature and praying for him as much as I might pray for a child I was worried over.

As I lay there my mind began swirling with images:

The tiny, lifeless piglet I carried over to the spare chicken coop and put under a heat lamp--hoping somehow it would pull through.

The kids in the goat shelter--rubbing struggling Emmy's body and praying over her difficult delivery. Mike at the laundry room sink--asking for more towels--while gently washing clean the dark, fuzzyy body of one of the little goat triplets we would have to bury with its two stillborn siblings.

Goldie carrying a goat (that could only barely lift its head) to the car in a rush to the vet--hoping for some remedy for his suffering--only for the remedies to fail.

The kids searching the farm--after a despair of white feathers were discovered--for our missing dewlap geese.

Another of Starling's baby peacocks gone.

Praying that big, beast-like, well-loved loved Pig was only sleeping as I went anxiously towards her prostrate form in the front pasture.

...

But, I didn't only think of those things. I saw them all woven in with:

Mike greeting the kids at the bus stop with a pony. 

The mother hen--desperate for a baby--successfully raising the little chick with the crooked beak that Mike put under her.

Starling bottle-feeding Kristy the goat.

Mette and Mike out walking Holly and Nelly.

A speckled cow and her nursing calf always at the fence edge--as if genuinely interested in where we are going to or coming from--always watching us come up and down the drive.

The months of Pig running after the kids everywhere they went on the farm and of her flopping joyfully onto her side every time they'd scratch her with a broom.

It feels almost as though stepping onto the farm placed me in some sort of little biodome. A tiny, enclosed bubble where I could watch an encapsulated miniature version of all of mortality--with its little tragedies and triumphs--play out. 

And not just in animals. In the flower beds I over-fertilized to the point that every lovingly-placed flower withered completely away but also in the pumpkins that grew in the pasture of their own accord--a small surprise offering from the farm. In the several-thousand-pound cement trough that Mike and Anders spent hours putting in place and arranging on Saturday--getting both a skid steer and a tractor stuck and unstuck in the process--only for it to stay dry most of the week as we wondered whether we'd gotten the pipe angle from the pond drain too high and would need to rearrange everything ... only to go be greeted yesterday to the almost unbelievable sight of the trough full to the brim--functioning perfectly after its initial worrisome delay.

Somehow living here I feel more aware of life's passing seasons, and joys, and sorrows. I feel more than ever aware of the swift rushing of time--of how beautiful a life is, how beautiful and how rapidly shifting and gliding onward. It's as if I can increasingly see everything at once. The beginning of an understanding over past, present and future all being before God. 

For example, it's Conference Weekend. My kids are all gathering here to be together for it. And I can already see them: spread about on couches and the floor, working on puzzles or clothing patches, coloring, married couples falling asleep on each other's shoulder, etc. 

But I can also still see:

My mom in the kitchen peeling potatoes for our between-session lunch/dinner (conference on the kitchen radio) or sitting in one of the big living room chairs embroidering our temple aprons.

My older married siblings scattered about the living room--working on photo albums and holding babies while watching the Sunday afternoon session.

Windows open and a sense of grown-upness and satisfaction as I turned on the first session of conference as a married woman on a lovely spring day in our little apartment on Harrison Blvd.

Three little kids gathered around a dial-up computer on our bedroom floor in Washington--wavy lines moving across the screen as the audio-only played through.

Babies in my arms and Legos all over the floor as I watched in our Pleasant View house.

Mike working on the antenna at the cabin trying to find conference for us there. 

And I can almost see:

More married kids and grandkids increasingly crowding in here with noise and toys and toddlers needing naps. 

And kids finding it easier to watch from their own home with their own kids. 

And Mike and I here watching in the quiet we longed for during the years or so many little ones ... and will only find strange once it arrives. 

...

All of it makes my heart swell with some sort of a strange "Wait! Stop for just a minute! Let me make sure I've taken at least this stage in! Let me make sure I understand all there is for me to understand and know right now before sending me beyond it again!"

My heart swells and expands with that feeling so much that if my ribs weren't there to stop it, it might keep swelling until it burst!

But anyway. Enough of that. Perhaps in some inexplicable way I will learn to take in all of it even as it's spirited into the past. Who knows. We shall see.

Our Little Kitten Magnet

But really! What are we to do? Where do they come from? I mean ... meowing directly outside of the one window in this house that belongs to a certain little girl whose defining character trait is "love of cats"? It's such a big farm for even one, tiny, homeless kitten to wander across to make it here. But for two to have done that in recent weeks?

It's really getting out of hand. 

But what is one to do? The pound doesn't want them. They'll spay or neuter strays for cheap but then just have you release them again. And who can let a tiny kitten starve? (Not that we would be able to let it starve even if we were that heartless. They just sneak up and eat the cat food we keep outside for our own cats after all. But having a little girl who loves them and fawns over them and comes outside to find and cuddle them and give them milk and carry them in to show off to everyone ... well it certainly encourages them to stick around! 

And who can blame them? She's got a good track record. Remember how Dusty looked when she found him in early August? 

Well, look at him now!

She's certainly establishing a good track record for helping them thrive! And they do love her. I was outside the other day as Dusty came by. I graciously offered to give him a pat and he fled from me. But Starling ... well ... they call to her for heaven's sake!

Ah well. The kids have less and less excuse to grumble over how strict I've become in forcing all cats to stay constantly outside these days. There are too many to let them in! We'd never even find them all in the house.

But goodness. 

No more cats! 

(How can we stop them from spreading the news to other stray kittens that Starling lives here and will find and love them if they just come?)

ANYWAY! 

Enough of that.

But speaking of things growing. 

Little Isaac will be one month by this weekend. 

And Nelly and Holly. They are growing too. (Actually, I don't know if they've grown much at all lately, but I needed to add this photo in somewhere.

Crafting (Minus Some of the Love) and Fall

For someone who doesn't really craft (remember when it took me six years to finish my Halloween witches?), I've sure been doing a lot of crafting lately. 

I think it started with this new house and the feeling that it might be fun to have holiday garlands in my big kitchen/living room windows ... only to discover that all the garlands one might ever find to buy were either too short or too expensive (or both). 

I quickly realized I would need to take matters into my own hands.

And thus the crafting. 

I'm no true crafter though. When I started on those yarn pumpkins, I was shocked that they actually took a decent amount of time. When I complained about this, Daisy explained something to me that I had not in the least understood. It was that one must craft not solely for the product but also "for the love of crafting". 

Hmm. Well. 

(Because the love was not wholly there, for my next pumpkin garland I skipped the yarn, bought a set of cheap velvet-looking pumpkins on Amazon, and hung those from twine. Nearly as cute and much less time-consuming.)

And, of course, I've found some things that a true crafter might have made all on their own, but I simply bought. Like these cute little friends making my house plants feel fall-ish.

And, as luck would have it, we got a surprising number of accidental pumpkins!

We didn't get a proper pumpkin patch going this year, but we had thrown all last year's leftovers into the pasture for the steers, and several sprouted. I thought there would be maybe seven in there. But there were all of these! A lot were quite small, but still a fun surprise! I can never have too many pumpkins. (We might even go so far as to say I can never have enough pumpkins.)

Speaking of fall: the Harvest Moon! (Isn't the sound of that just lovely? It's wonderful that we have a moon we call the Harvest Moon.)

This bottom one was taken when our smoke detectors all started going off before dawn Saturday morning. It took a solid half hour before we could figure out which one was faulty and get them all stopped. For a while I left Mike and Jesse to it and escaped the beeping by going outside--where the Harvest Moon greeted me.

And sort of related to Halloween coming: Daisy and Penny went as Wirt and Greg to FanX this past weekend:

If you've seen the strange, little series of Over the Garden Wall (it's not for everyone), you'll see them with this random person/wolf/dog and want to say, "You have beautiful eyes!"

A few of their cousins met them there as well.

Lastly, The Rental didn't have any deciduous trees. Not one! So it's quite happy to look out the windows or pull in our driveway and see leaves changing colors! (Though I still miss the amazing reds of our Pleasant View backyard maples. But my good Mike--who forever is thinking of the things that I love--bought me three the other day that we will try and get to grow here. Maples have trouble with low iron and with too much water, so we might have a hard time succeeding, but we got a variety that are supposed to be more water tolerant. So my fingers are crossed! In the meantime we have a smattering of red leaves sitting right next to my porch on these new trees, and I'm loving things turning yellow everywhere else around here. (There's not a week that goes by that my mind doesn't rejoicingly praise my father-in-law Alma for planting so many trees here! I don't even know what inspired him to do it. Certainly he couldn't have known then that it would be for us! I'm so grateful!)

Welcome to fall and holidays and decorating the house!

Mooing (and miscellany)

There has been a tremendous amount of mooing from the cows our neighbor keeps here lately. I really enjoy seeing cows directly outside my window. (Though perhaps sometimes it's a bit too directly. See image of an escaped calf staring straight in at me below.)

And I really don't even mind hearing them. (Sometimes I even like it.) But mooing is really best in small doses. And the mooing from around here, of late, has been in very large doses. 

Not that I blame them. All the babies have been fitted with large plastic rings in their noses to interfere with them nursing. And their mothers are all walking about in great discomfort just mooing and mooing and mooing. Mike tells me that, sad as this seems, keeping the calves with their moms during weaning is less stressful on the animals than simply separating them, but my goodness it doesn't make for a quiet farm!

On a positive note, our own calf is still happily with his own mother and I don't know that we will ever have to force weaning on him. (Of course ... what do I know? This is all still new to me.)

Other things?

This silly person. (I get sad sometimes thinking about all the darling pajamas she has that she won't wear.)

Hans up and made himself this shirt the other day. Dear kid.

Part of Wellsville was translated (taken directly up to heaven) recently. At least that's what I assume was happening here. It's a shame we are on unincorporated county land and, therefore, couldn't go up with the righteous of Wellsville.

I don't think we will get quite as much fog at the farm as we did at the rental. (When we lived at the rental I would often drive out of it right as I hit the bridge after the road to the farm.) But I was happy to wake up to this the other morning. It reassured me that we'll still get our share of mists and fogs. 

We, none of us, know exactly what made Starling draw this Darth-Vader-looking fellow, but we all love "Derfermaddek".

Anders joined cross-country this year. It's been such a great way for him to start high school--feeling involved and part of a team, etc.